


in a thousand different realities

by vouloirs



Category: Fleabag (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind Fusion, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-23
Updated: 2019-10-23
Packaged: 2020-12-31 15:17:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21147845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vouloirs/pseuds/vouloirs
Summary: fleabag and the priest somehow keep finding each other, even though they've tried their best to erase each other from their minds. | fleabag x eternal sunshine au





	in a thousand different realities

It made perfect sense for her to leave London. She never even questioned it, even when she couldn't remember exactly when she'd signed the lease or gotten on the road — when had that shitstorm of a city done anything good for her, anyway? After everything that happened with Boo, and her godmother.. Maybe it was easier to leave. And was it so wrong to want something easy? 

Even Claire had caved. Walked away from the daily masochistic torture of her marriage and went looking for something softer and kinder in  _ Finland _ of all places, cutting that final thread that bound her to the city’s foggy streets. She sighs and picks up her mug, taking a deep drink of warm tea that she wished was whiskey. 

Moving was the perfect decision. It was just so difficult to put together a new apartment on her own, even somewhere as beautiful as Brighton. She leaned back, sinking into the floor against her elbows as she flips through the manual  _ again _ . Surely putting together furniture can’t be this difficult? This is probably the only reason why people keep men around, when they put together a stupid IKEA dresser and their shirt clings so beautifully to the contours of their body and you can just sit in the corner drinking a glass of cheap white wine. 

But there is no man, and no wine, and she just has to pick up the pieces and try and jam them together in a way that will bear the weight of all her things. 

— — —

It is three hours later and it seems she has finally beaten the stack of wooden slats into submission, even if she has two (differently shaped) screws lying on the ground with no conceivable place to put them. A small smile flits across her face, the warm pride of knowing she managed to do  _ something _ , even something as small and simple as this, from start to finish filling her chest. Alright, then. If that doesn’t deserve a bottle of wine, she doesn’t know what does.

The cap twists off easily (convenience store wine means the convenience of not needing a corkscrew or any dignity), and she contemplates how bad it would be to drink straight out of the bottle. It’s not like anyone’s there to judge, and it’s not like things could get much worse.

She picks up the remote and flicks on the telly, letting the sound of bad late-night television wash over her like the waves that crashed on Brighton's rocky shores.

— — —

The sleep comes in fits and starts, and the patchy images of a day long gone swim back to the surface. It’s the cafe — where else in the world would be covered in the same adornment of guinea pig paraphernalia? But that must mean it’s the past, right? She’s not in London anymore, and it would be insane for her landlord to keep all that decor up. 

And in the middle of that cornflower blue room is a man. His face is caught slightly out of focus like a manual camera in the hands of a toddler, but her lips lift up in a smile at the sight of him anyway.  _ Who is this guy? And why does he call to me like… a life I never knew I wanted? _

She crosses the room towards him, and wills herself to look at him properly. Wills the lens to sharpen so she can figure out who this dream man is, so she can find him, if he even exists. She trips on a loose floorboard, and his hand shoots out to steady her. She braces for the warm contact of his fingers against her skin, and —

The jerk of falling wakes her up. Shit. A hand drags across her face, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes roughly. A glance towards the alarm clock beside her bed makes her slump back into the bed. What normal person wakes up at five in the morning? Christ. The sun isn’t even up yet. But maybe it’s time to be a new person, and make some new habits. Why move to the coast and stay exactly the same as she’d been in London?

She ambles out of bed lazily, managing to feel her way to the bathroom and brush her teeth by sheer luck. Heads to the kitchen in a haze, cracking eggs into a pan and poking at them gently. It’s probably not kitchen safe to be cooking in your underwear, but none of her partners have ever complained before. She eats them right out of the pan with a small sprinkle of salt and pepper, chucking it all into the sink right after. A problem for future her.

It takes about twenty minutes for her to pull herself into something decent enough for public presentation, and she slaps on a light dusting of blush and a swipe of lipstick before looking in the mirror.  _ Oh wow. Very nice, actually. Amazing what a bit of effort can do for you.  _

— — —

The sun is warm on her skin as she meanders towards the pier. Oh, the simple joy of walking in the summer sun. If she told Claire about that, her sister would’ve probably flown in from Finland just to check that she hadn’t been possessed. Or worse, kidnapped. 

Maybe this change of pace is exactly what she needed to invite a new season into her life. 

She ducks into a tea shop on the side of the street, the navy blue accents on their walls and signs calling back to a place she once called home. She couldn’t explain exactly  _ why _ she’d been drawn into the store, but it just looked  _ comfortingly blue _ . New seasons, new life, but maybe a little familiarity would be good.

The stacks of tins upon tins are almost a little too much for her to take in, each little cubby holding a delicate blend of aromatics that feel almost too precious to touch. She mills through the store, picking up a series of tins in turn as she smiles and nods at the sales assistant explaining each tea blend to her. It would be good information if she was actually listening, but her mind had drifted off.

Off in the direction of her dream, and the kind-faced man with the crinkles in his eyes as he smiled. _ Wait a second _ . That wasn’t the face she’d seen in the dream. She hadn’t seen  _ any _ face in the dream quite this clearly. This — this man was standing in front of her, smiling impossibly at what must’ve been a deranged look of confusion on her face.

“Hi, can I help you with anything?”

“I’m quite sure you don’t work here,” she laughed, mind still reeling as she tried to piece together  _ something _ that could explain the way she recognized his face. “Unless somehow they’ve got you to dress up like  _ that _ .”

No, the rest of the people in the shop were in simple black t-shirts and aprons with their name tags.  _ He _ was in — what do you call those? — a priest’s robe? Well, that was strange. What the fuck was a priest doing in her dream?

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> it's been forever since i have posted anything here. if you're waiting on an update on my previous works, i apologize! muse is a fickle thing. thank you for your patience and for reading my work.


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